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Ranking:
Sale Price: $23.92 Last Price: $29.99 Buy now! 3rd Party 30.42 In Stock
Release Date: February 22nd, 2012 Movie Release Year: 2012

Army Corps of Hell

Overview -

'Army Corps of Hell' is the first title created by Entersphere, a development company created by former Nintendo project manager Motoi Okamoto. He worked on a bevy of titles over the years including 'Wii Fit,' 'Super Mario Sunshine,' 'Wii Play' and 'Pikmin.' It's that last game that proves to be the most important.

When Okamoto left Nintendo in 2008, he didn't go alone - members of the 'Pikmin' team came him to help launch Entersphere. In December of 2011, the company's first game, 'Army Corps of Hell,' launched in Japan and in mid-February it came to the U.S.

OVERALL:
Rating Breakdown
VIDEO
AUDIO
Tech Specs & Release Details
Technical Specs:
PSN Price: $34.99
Video Resolution/Codec:
1Q HD
Audio Formats:
Stereo
Release Date:
February 22nd, 2012

Video Review

Ranking:

This 'Pikmin' like game that seems to take its design cues directly from the stuff rattling around in the head in the head of every 16-year old metal listening D&D nerd. In other words, it takes its design cues from me 13 years ago. There's fire and lightning and demons and dragons and plenty of the imagery you'd expect from a game called 'Army Corps of Hell.'

You can only blame the design team so much for the game's visuals. The stages are repetitive and get stale quickly, but it seems like the art design was limited by something beyond their control - technical limitations perhaps? Whatever the case and whoever the blame goes to, even the most badass boss feels tired against a setting that we've been playing in over and over again.

The enemy designs are bland, but it seems that some care was put into the goblins. They're designed to be sympathetic but also pitiful. You almost want to help them, but you'd rather kick them. In a game that's otherwise visually uninteresting, they're a nice touch.

Audio Review

Ranking:

It should be obvious from watching trailers, but the music in this game is incredible. There's so much energy and so much variety that I ended up playing just to listen to the tunes provided by local Japanese metal bands.

I've read countless times in reviews and previews that the game has a death metal soundtrack, and while there are death metal songs in the game, that's not a complete story. Songs range from the aforementioned death metal to black metal and plenty of to lighten things up along the way. It's a really fun soundtrack with a good deal of variety. I'll definitely be looking up a few of these bands in the near future.

The sound effects in the game are, for the most part, unremarkable. The one thing that stands out though, is the constant noise from your goblins. Every time they're commanded to do something, they make annoying, high pitched noises that I got sick of very quickly. Were it not for the killer soundtrack, it would be hard to deal with.

'Army Corps of Hell' isn't a terrible game, and I did have fun with it for a few hours, but I just can't see recommending it. If this were a $10-$15 downloadable title I would say it's worth taking a chance on, but as a $39 full-release title it just doesn't hold up. Unless you're a diehard fan of the game type or you want to support a new IP that takes a chance, I wouldn't suggest buying 'Army Corps of Hell.' If the soundtrack is ever made available though, that's a day one purchase.